Friday, March 8, 2013

Today is International Women’s Day, and along with honoring all the amazing women in my life, I am reflecting on how the Drug War in Colombia uniquely impacts women. Finding a voice that gives this the weight it deserves—and by “this,” I mean the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and citizenship within the context of the Drug War—is proving a challenge, given my privilege: yes, I am a woman, but I’m also white, middle-class, and a U.S. citizen working for a U.S. NGO in a country that is a close political ally of our government. I can share my observations of how the drug war impacts Colombian women. I can listen closely to what our partners tell us. But when it comes down to it, my role is that of a microphone for others’ daily lived experiences. I’ve never liked the expression “give voice to the voiceless” because I think it minimizes the agency of the people we work with: they have voices; they just get drowned out by more powerful interests. And in this sense, women especially have suffered.

In the three months that I have lived in Colombia, I have seen the emergence of two major themes relating to women in the drug war. The first is the strategic abuse of women’s bodies as the first “territory” violated in the conflict. The second is the systematic silencing of social inequality and interpersonal violence within communities for the sake of unity and the greater struggle for peace.

I remember so clearly a meeting with a representative of Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres (Women’s Peace Route), a national organization of different women’s groups dedicated to working for peace in Colombia. She shared the story of one community in which every single female-bodied person had been raped at the hands of armed actors seeking control of the area. Guerillas, paramilitaries, the state armed forces; the specific allegiance is irrelevant. Throughout the 60-year armed conflict in Colombia, all armed actors have used sexual violence against women to sew terror and trauma within communities to further their strategic goals and social control. The phenomenon has been so pronounced and systematic that we were told of parents desperately trying to send their baby girls away from conflict zones, shoving them into the open windows of buses leaving town: “Please, take them with you.”

Despite 1991 Constitutional reforms and a victim’s law for women, difficulties prosecuting such violations persist for a number of reasons. The state has consistently denied these crimes, leading to impunity for perpetrators and a general silencing of the problem. Meanwhile, many women do not report these crimes for fear of reprisal against them and their families, out of shame and feelings of guilt, or because the practice has become so normalized that many do not recognize themselves as crime victims and survivors of sexual assault.

Even communities involved in the struggle for peace and a more just drug policy in Colombia can work to silence women. In challenging U.S. military aid and counternarcotics policy, gender issues are often relegated to the bottom of the list to present a cohesive movement for what is seen as the more pressing cause. One of our partners, a feminist indigenous leader who is also a survivor of domestic violence, put it this way: “It’s so hard for us to speak out against gender violence in our communities when an external enemy has been created and raising these issues means sacrificing a perceived unity that our community has in being able to confront these outside monsters in a unified fashion. In a climate where the United States is financing bombs dropping over our communities and the militarization of our territories, how are we supposed to open up spaces to challenge interpersonal dynamics?” Knowing these dynamics exist in communities we work in can be a huge struggle. How can we be in solidarity with a community protesting the fumigation of their land and loss of their territory when we know domestic violence exists there? How can we document the struggle of a whole community when we attend meetings to which no women were even invited?

International Women’s Day is the perfect time to recognize that social justice has never been a zero-sum game and that we must build an inclusive movement for drug policy reform. The commitment to end U.S. counternarcotics policy that fuels violence abroad and the struggle for a sensible domestic drug policy must include a commitment to end structural and direct gender violence, instead of forcing gender issues to continue to take a backseat. Our struggles against violence in all its forms are inseparable. If we do not acknowledge this, we will not only weaken the movement by silencing important contributions, but risk being complicit in the continued marginalization of women and other vulnerable groups suffering under the very same structures we claim to oppose.

Although much work remains to be done, there are powerful examples of women refusing to let this happen, and of organizing nonviolently in the face of incredible violence. In one of the communities Ruta Pacifica has supported, a paramilitary controlled territory, transport by river was especially dangerous, since the paramilitaries would often line the banks and kill people attempting to pass. A group of women filled a canoe with candles, and then slowly rowed down the river, singing lullabies. Hearing the songs of their childhood, the paramilitaries could not bring themselves to attack because the lyrics reminded them of their own mothers and grandmothers and therefore of the women’s humanity—and perhaps of their own. As women work to end the Drug War, we must strive to ensure that our voices, songs and stories are heard along the path that allows us to walk our dreams into the future.

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